Social, mobile, analytics and cloud or SMAC technologies are the Indian Government’s focus for its next round of e-government initiatives, with plans to set up new departments specifically to govern their use.

The SMAC focus is part of the new E-Governance Programme (EGP) 2.0 (also known as E-Kranti), local media reported. The IT Ministry is working with the various state governments and some central government ministries to adopt procedures dealing with SMAC technologies, shared J. Satyanarayana, Secretary of the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY).

An unnamed official informed that so far 20 of all the states have responded to the IT ministry’s proposal on SMAC and new business models to incorporate these practices. Governments are the largest repositories of data - there have been 2.85 billion transactions between the Government and citizens in 2013, Satyanarayana informed.

Mobility has been of rising importance in India with agencies reaching out to about five million people through mobile government initiatives.

Highlighting the demand for analytics, Hyderabad city recently implemented an intelligent transport system provided by CMC. Data gathered from GPS in public buses is being used to track the frequency and delay of buses in each route, allowing city officials to plan for the deployment of more buses.

The Government recently invested about INR 1 billion (US$16.3 million) into its new cloud environment. Satyanarayana aims to familiarise departments with cloud, especially those that are reluctant due to security and privacy concerns.

Social mobile analytics and cloud or SMAC technologies are the Indian Government’s focus for its next round of e-government initiatives with plans to set up new departments specifically to govern their use